Fighting Game Guide

I created some training mode exercises to help you practice these concepts. I use Street Fighter V because a lot of people own the game. I hope my training mode exercises inspire you to create your own exercises for any of the fighting games you play. If you come up with any cool exercises share them on Twitter, Discord, or Youtube.

Walking Exercise 1

Here's how we're going to setup our training exercises. Go to Dummy Settings, find the Playback Recording menu in the Status section, and set Display Recording Playback Info to OFF. Keep this off forever.

When we do any kind of Recording Setting leave Start Recording Settings on Button Input unless I say otherwise. Interval Setting is set at 0 unless I say otherwise. This will be our default setting. Macro Restart Battle as a Shortcut command on anything you want. I have mine on L3.

Pick Chun Li for Player 1 and Birdie for Player 2. You'll only be using two attacks. Her crouching heavy kick which is performed with the down direction and heavy kick. And her Tsuitotsuken which is performed with the left or right direction and medium punch.

Go to Action Recording Settings and record this:
Recording Slot 1: Walk forward one step, walk backwards one step.
Recording Slot 2: Walk backwards one step, walk forward one step.
Recording Slot 3: Walk forward two steps.
Recording Slot 4: Walk backwards two steps.

Here are the rules for our training exercise: You have to hit Birdie as he's walking forward with Tsuitotsuken 5 times. And you have to hit Birdie as he's walking backwards with crouching heavy kick 5 times. Him blocking your attacks is okay. If Birdie touches you, start over. If Birdie's back ever touches the wall behind him, start over.

You'll build a couple of habits if you're a beginner. You'll notice you'll start walking forward when you predict your opponent will walk backwards. And you only walk a couple of steps at a time.

Walking Exercise 2

Go to Action Recording Settings and record this:
Recording Slot 1: Walk forward one step, walk backwards one step.
Recording Slot 2: Walk backwards one step, walk forward one step.
Recording Slot 3: Light punch.
Recording Slot 4: Heavy punch.

The goal of this exercise is to whiff punish Birdie's heavy punch five times with your standing medium kick. The light punches are feints to test your reactions. Try not to react to the light punches but it's okay if you do because you're only human. If Birdie touches you, start over. If you get hit by Birdie's attack, start over. If you get cornered, start over.

After practicing this exercise for a while you'll notice that you stop looking at your character and start looking at your opponent's character or the space between the two characters. This is where you should be looking most of the time in fighting games.